I notice the splotch of reddish brown staining my palm as I reach for a towel to dry my hands. It can’t be the water; the sink old enough to have been crafted by Tubal-Cain barely blushes. I wash again, content to leave the mystery unsolved if a better scrub will erase it. No change. Now I remember. As I visited with my oldest son earlier in the evening, we picked and ate plums from the tree in his yard, juice gushing over our hands, apparently creating a semi-permanent Jackson Pollock on mine.
The stain’s persistence echoes Lady Macbeth’s stubborn spot and Pilate’s empty ritual; each following on Isaiah’s prophecy: “…your hands are full of blood. Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean….” The Lady, the Governor, Israel, and I, all handle the same problem: we wash, but the stain remains.
My palm’s plum tattoo is finally and completely gone in about the span of time between Pilate’s vain effort to purge Jesus’ blood from his hands and Jesus’ unstained emergence from the tomb.
God has made our hands what we could not—clean, holy—so we will lift them without anger or quarreling (as Paul says it), ascend the hill to stand in his holy place (as David says it), and grow stronger and stronger (as Job says it). “Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us, and establish the work of our hands upon us; yes, establish the work of our hands!”
This week, may we open the hands he has made holy, to worship and supplicate, to serve him and the people he loves.